Mortal Kombat: Annihilation

Yeah its flawed. Its idiotic. It doesn't follow the video game well enough. The acting is the worst you'll ever see anywhere. The fight scenes are pathetic and the choreography is even worse than its predecessor. The special effects are terrible and worse than you can possibly imagine. The storyline is nonexistent. There are a lot of scenes and parts which make no sense whatsoever. But at no point is it ever boring. So it is highly watchable despite being a piece of crap. If you be a fan of the MK franchise or are expecting a good movie, watch it to see how bad a movie can get, just for education. It does however take a special kind of talent to ruin a franchise and movie which already has a good plot in place (refer to the MK video games). This movie's entire cast and crew have that talent and so does a retard called Paul Anderson.

The problem with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation isn't that it's stupid, with no significant plot, dialogue or characters. That is undebatably true of Annihilation, but that was also true with the first Mortal Kombat movie, and that was a great movie. The problem is the HUGE let down in the martial arts and special effects scenes. MK had some terrific fight scenes, such as the brilliant Cage/Scorpion fight in the forest, the great Liu Kang/SubZero fight, and the cool finale with Shang Tsung. Annihilation didn't have any fight scenes up to the quality of those three, many of the fight scenes made no sense, and the finale was horrible. In addition, some things in Annihilation I would really like an explanation for:

• Why did Raiden dress up like Aladdin half way through the movie? Was looking like a complete dork part of becoming mortal? And where was Christopher Lambert, anyway?

• What was the third test? Where did that Wolf-guy go? What happened to Sub-Zero?

• Why did they do that stupid thing with Jax' bionic arms? Stupid movies should admit they are stupid movies. Stupid movies which try to have serious elemends become bad movies.

• Same deal with Katana's mother.

• What was point of that huge monster that came out of nowhere to attack Sonya, then immediately went back to it's whole when Jax hit it on the head? Was it a whack-a-mole?

• How is it that Sonya and Jade began to fight IN A DESERT and they immediately fell into a mud pit?

• Why did Smoke maticulously break every window in that random building before fighting Sonya and Jax?

• What was the point of having Liu Kang turn into a dragon? He just turned into a human again, without having done anything effective as a dragon. How was that useful?

• Why didn't they spend more then $80 on the special effects for that dragon? I could do better then that with miniatures and clay animation.

• How is it that this movie could have been made so badly, with such bad cinematography and such pathetic martial arts effects, after the first one was so good?

By all that's Holy! A film that made me cringe the whole way through! Dear Lord how the studio bosses must have laughed as they counted the money that they made off this turkey. Now, I thought the first MK was an OK film, great soundtrack, OK acting and plenty of fighting. A good no-brainer actioner. But this....this....defies belief.

How on Earth can you get such a bunch of wooden actors together and still manage to hide all the strings? It comes to something when you look at a film and can honestly say the best actor in it is Brian Thompson! The actors playing the bad guys overacted so awfully it was painful to watch, expecially the centaur guy. He exuded ham to a level I've not seen before.

The special effects were truly special, but only in a "special needs" kind of way. Looks like they were lifted straight from the video game itself. Laugh as you watch something resembling a dragon perform martial arts very badly. Laugh as Brian Thompson turns into a......thing. Laugh at the terrible lack of detail in it all. Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh and laugh again, right up until they slap the straightjacket on you and cart you off to the loony bin. Because only someone truly demented would want to sit through this terrible, terrible film.

Eh? What's that Doc? Yes, I know I sat through it. But it was all in the name of science, you see. I was doing research. By the way, you couldn't loosen this jacket a bit, could you?

Anyway, as I say, the best actor was Brian Thompson. Only he saved it from getting a 1, but even then, the rest prevented it from getting any more than a 2.

Avoid it if you value your sanity!

Robin Shou and Talisa Soto return but everybody else is gone. This follows directly from the original movie. Outworld emperor Shao Kahn opens a portal to Earthrealm. He is joined by Kitana's resurrected mother, Queen Sindel. Johnny Cage is immediately killed off and the emperor promises to conquer Earth in six days.

The fun of the original is gone. It's an obvious step down when the movie opens with so many of the original actors missing. Even the special effects take a giant step down. This is a movie made by people with no foresight for franchise building. This is about making a few quick bucks and getting out. They use scraps and leftovers from the first movie. It's bad from start to finish although it does have a fight between Scorpion and Sub-Zero. It's still not good.

I must admit that I quite enjoyed the first film. Not the best martial arts flick in the world, but by no means the worst. However, compared to this, its a damn masterpiece!

1) There are WAAAAAY too many characters. In the first, you had the four heroes (Cage, Sonya, Kang, and Raiden), and about five villains (Kahn, Kano, Sub-zero, Scorpion, and Goro). This meant that at least some amount of time could be spent building on characters. Thus, before we see Sub zero,Goro and scorpion fight, we know who they are , and their reputations. This doesnt happen with a single character in MK:A because it is too busy trying to throw as many characters from the games at you as possible that it often doesnt even have time to mention who they are (e.g. Smoke, Cyrax, Rain, Baraka, Mileena).

2) It's had a $30 million budget, yet seems to have spent on completely the wrong things. I would have much rather they had halved their SFX budget and hired a decent fight choreographer. Put it this way: Iron Monkey cost less than $4 (if I remember correctly) for the entire film, and there isnt a single fight in MK:A that comes close to the worst in that film, which leads on to the next point.

3) The direction is TERRIBLE!! Especially during the fights!!! Watch any decent fight sequence, and generally the cuts are kept to a minimum. It both makes the fight easier to follow, and shows off the skill of the participants more. Its rare in this film that any flow between moves occurs without cuts. During one move, there are actually about five cuts!! No cuts would have looked much better!!

4) Its hard to decide which is worse, the script, or the acting.

5) The SFX heavy final battle is perhaps the lamest thing I have ever seen.

There are people who will defend this film saying that "its just fun!", or "Its not meant to be deep and meaningful or anything". Which works for some films. And those films can be fun. Or not deep and meaningful, but still enjoyable. This isnt. Its bad. It hasnt got one redeeming feature that I can think of. Possibly the worst film. Ever.